Abbott came before SFRA. Abbott refers to a series of court decisions that were brought challenging how certain urban districts were funded. Without getting into an entire explanation of decades long litigation, it found that these districts were not getting the thorough and adequate education guaranteed by the Constitution. The case repeatedly came back to the Supreme Court on remedies phases. Lots of it had to do with how much money the state had to give the districts that were part of the lawsuit, but others implemented other remedies, such as the requirement for universal full day pre-K.

SFRA was passed under Corzine. It basically created a legislative formula for state school aid for all districts. It was supposed to eliminate the Abbott/Non-Abbott distinction. The NJ Supreme Court said that this was acceptable.

Nevertheless the Abbott distinction still has meaning for various reasons.

1. As part of the formula, Abbott districts receive additional aid to hold them harmless from the change.

2. Other parts of the Abbott ruling not relating to the amount of aid, such as the mandated pre-K and payment of capital costs by the state, remain in effect.

3. When the legislature underfunded SFRA, the lawsuit went to the NJ Supreme Court again. The court held that the legislature could not underfund the districts below what SFRA required, BUT that the court only had jurisdiction to order remedies for the Abbott districts. They were the only parties in the case from the outset, so they were the only ones who could get relief. They essentially declined to turn the Abbott case into a vehicle to implement the SFRA on behalf of the entire state. From one perspective, this sounds unfair, and may be unfair. But it also makes sense because it would be highly problematic for the the Court to use a case with specific parties to become a tribune with a roving mandate to monitor school funding for every district in the state.

brewster wrote:So if this SFRA system is perfectly balanced to determine aid and accounts for socioeconomic differences and special needs students, why then was Abbott created?

Abbott precedes SFRA by quite a lot.

The Abbott II decision was in 1990. Abbott II was the decision that created the "Parity Plus" doctrine that required the state to fund the Abbott districts above the average level of the DFG I and J districts.

In 1990 there was state aid, but it was a very even distribution on a per student basis. Poor districts got more than rich districts, but not by a lot. Millburn then, for instance, spent about $6000 per student, whereas Irvington only spent about $4500, and Millburn and Irvington were not even the greatest extremes of spending.

So many people felt that poor, urban districts didn't get enough money back in 1990. Differences in local tax capacity overwhelmed the equalizing effects of state aid and resulted in gross inequity.

I have two big probs with Abbott.

1. It applied only to the Abbott plaintiffs. Poor districts that weren't part of the Abbott lawsuit were left behind.

The Abbott list has always been disparate. Neptune and Pemberton, for instance, were in DFG CD in 1990 and yet they became Abbotts while about 20-30 DFG A districts didn't. I doubt that Hoboken ever had one of NJ's lowest tax bases.

It's one thing to give greater resources to poor districts so they spend an above average amount (this is what Florio originally wanted to do), but to have them spend above the richest districts is unaffordable, takes from other poor districts, and enters into the territory of diminishing returns.

stateaidguy wrote:EV is the market value of property in a town. It is calculated annually by the county tax assessor. If real estate sales exceed assessed values by 20% on average, the assessor multiples the assessed value by 1.2 to get Equalized Valuation.

EV doesn't include abated property. It only includes taxable real estate. (which might include land values for abated properties since land taxes are usually not abated.)

Aggregate Income is total income. I am not exactly 100% sure how this is computed. The people at the DOE I asked didn't know because the data is calculated by the Treasury, not the DOE.

However, The income of residents of PILOTed buildings definitely does count towards Aggregate Income, so if you want to make another anti-PILOT argument you could say that PILOTed properties slightly increase JC's Local Fair Share even though they pay no school taxes.

The formula for LFS changes slightly year to year, so you can't compare a district's LFS from one year to another, but within a FY year, you can compare a district's LFS to another district's.

JC's LFS = $330 million.Edison is #2, but its LFS is only $195 million.

So JC's tax base is 60% larger than the #2 town in NJ.

OK, that's certainly interesting that they use the personal income of the entire city population. But comparing tax bases without population seems irrelevant. JC's tax base is 60% more than Edison, but it's population is 250% larger, making it a much poorer city, if I understand the methodology correctly.

I was only talking about the absolute size of the tax base here, not the per capita tax base or the per student tax base.

SFRA, fortunately, recognizes that Jersey City's needs are greater than Edison's and would thus give Jersey City a lot more aid.

Remember, Local Fair Share is just one half of the calculation of Equalization Aid; the other half is Adequacy Budget and that depends on enrollment and the proportion of kids who are at-risk.

Thus, if Edison got its uncapped aid, it would get $2,511 per student. (In reality Edison only gets $951 per student and so is underaided.)

If Jersey City got its uncapped aid it would get $9,298 per student. (In reality Jersey City gets $13,570 per student and so is overaided.)

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To give more examples of how SFRA, if it operated, would produce a continuum of state aid that corresponds to NJ's continuum of need and local resources.

If West Orange got its uncapped aid it would get $4,830 per student. (in reality it gets $1,038 per student and is badly underaided.)

If Bloomfield got its uncapped aid it would get $8,343 per student. (in reality it gets $3,268 per student and is severely underaided.)

If Bayonne got its uncapped aid it would get $11,113 per student. (in reality it gets $5,802 and is severely underaided.)

If Paterson got its uncapped aid it would get $15,707 per student (In reality Paterson gets $14,426 and is modestly underaided)

If Camden got its uncapped aid it would get $17,143 per student. (In reality Camden gets $18,142 per student and is modestly overaided.)

Perhaps if Jersey City could retain some of the income tax collected by the state, and the other benefits of economic activity that go to the state, it may be reasonable to say that Jersey City is a rich city not needing the school funding it receives.

Maybe Christie can return the UEZ funds that he took from the city to balance the budget (which he couldn't balance anyway).

Using income in a large urban area can be misleading because the income of public school families does not necessarily reflect the income of the city overall.

stateaidguy wrote:EV is the market value of property in a town. It is calculated annually by the county tax assessor. If real estate sales exceed assessed values by 20% on average, the assessor multiples the assessed value by 1.2 to get Equalized Valuation.

EV doesn't include abated property. It only includes taxable real estate. (which might include land values for abated properties since land taxes are usually not abated.)

Aggregate Income is total income. I am not exactly 100% sure how this is computed. The people at the DOE I asked didn't know because the data is calculated by the Treasury, not the DOE.

However, The income of residents of PILOTed buildings definitely does count towards Aggregate Income, so if you want to make another anti-PILOT argument you could say that PILOTed properties slightly increase JC's Local Fair Share even though they pay no school taxes.

The formula for LFS changes slightly year to year, so you can't compare a district's LFS from one year to another, but within a FY year, you can compare a district's LFS to another district's.

JC's LFS = $330 million.Edison is #2, but its LFS is only $195 million.

So JC's tax base is 60% larger than the #2 town in NJ.

OK, that's certainly interesting that they use the personal income of the entire city population. But comparing tax bases without population seems irrelevant. JC's tax base is 60% more than Edison, but it's population is 250% larger, making it a much poorer city, if I understand the methodology correctly.

A lot has been made of JC's development, but 3/4 of the city is still relatively poor by NJ standards.

SFRA does a pretty good job of evaluating a district's needs and tax capacity.

Needs is the Adequacy Budget. It is the enrollment with extra weights for poor kids, ESL kids, and then an extra multiplier for concentrated poverty.

Tax Capacity is the Local Fair Share. It is a hybrid that depends on Equalized Valuation and Aggregate Income.

If a district's Adequacy Budget is greater than its Local Fair Share it is supposed to get Equalization Aid.

If LFS is greater than Adequacy Budget it doesn't get Equalization Aid.

If Adequacy Budget is $60 million and Local Fair Share is $45 million, a district is supposed to pay $45 million in taxes and get $15 million in Equalization Aid. (In reality, chances are the district will not get $15 million in Equalization Aid.)

There are aids for sped, transportation, and security, but these are smaller streams and to keep things simple I won't address them here.

Ok, so JC has $21,661,162,459 in EV. It has $7,454,497,639 in Aggregate Income.

Put them together in the formula for LFS and you get $330 million.

And what is JC's actual tax levy?

$112 million

Now let's compare Jersey City to ... say BELLEVILLE. (just a random local working class example.)

Belleville's EV = $2,790,454,316. Agg Income = $916,370,877.

And Belleville's tax levy?

$38 million.

So are you kidding me when you tell me that you can't pay more in taxes when a town with a ninth of your valuation pays a third of your tax levy?

I think I followed that, it is a little arcane and hard to reproduce playing at home. Could you define Equalized Valuation and Aggregate Income? Am I correct in believing the 'equalized value' does not include abated property at all? Or is it squeezed in there somehow?

Actually, we should shove this digression over to the appropriate thread, since the one thing we all agree on is it has nothing to do with the reval.

We have our answer to a lot of poverty, since it seems to be self-inflicted-stop having babies out of wedlock. We're now generations into the breakdown of the inner city family (and the suburbs are slowly catching up), so we have a generation now of single parent children having out of wedlock kids of their own. Each generation is more behind the 8 ball. It used to be a matter of shame, now we have the age of baby mommas and baby daddies being celebrated. No amount of public money can solve this.

JSleeze wrote:I reposted so it links to the absolute numbers - white kids raised by single parents are about 50% more than black. Percentages have nothing to do with it - if single parent households are the problem, as you seem to be suggesting - tough to really tell whether that is what you are saying or "I'm an ignorant racist" is what you really want to say - there is a much larger cohort of white kids in that circumstance and studying them would be informative. Other than saying "because I said so", you offer nothing to support your view that percentages matter.

He's not going to support his "view" - doubtless regurgitated from Fox News". Conservatives know who the bad guys are, and information isn't going to get in their way.

Here is a link to supplement yours, which points to the real problem with single parenthood - the fact that it historically predicts childhood poverty and limited opportunities http://www.theatlantic.com/business/a ... nthood-in-america/279203/ It probably is a good idea to study different groups on single parent households, to see if there are any commonalities between different racial/ethnic groups in terms of their own socio-economic backgrounds, the types of communities they live in and whether that influences their kids, etc.

JCGuys wrote:With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

The majority of the kids in public school in Hoboken fit that criteria. A high percentage of public school students in that city are from the Projects, section 8 buildings and rent control buildings. The new residents to Hoboken for the most part send their kids to private school and very few have kids to begin with.

I always assumed that is one of the reasons why Hoboken never knocked down their Projects because it would hurt the school system. I believe HP is the largest in NJ and the only large cluster of high rises that hasn't been demolished or scheduled to. They have four 10 story, eight 7 story and about thirty 3 story buildings in one site, plus two more 7 story building at a separate Project blocks away. Applied housing also owns many section 8 buildings scattered through out the city as well. So while the average adult resident isn't poor the average school aged child is.

The numbers you have on Hoboken are out of date. In 2013-2014, the most recent year for which I have data, the Hoboken schools are only 49% FRL-eligible. This is only the 96th highest in New Jersey. FRL-eligibility is not the same thing as being in poverty either - you can be at 185% of the poverty line to qualify for reduced lunch and 130% of the poverty line for free lunch.

Less than 1% of Hoboken students are ELLs, an extremely low figure. The state average is 5%.

...Equalized Valuation is calculated annually by the county tax assessor and is supposed to be the market valuation of all the taxable real estate in a city. Equalized Valuation is used to apportion county taxes and school taxes in regional school districts.

How do they get market valuations without a reval? EV is at best a guess - particularly if it's been 27 years since the last reval.

I'm not sure of all the mechanics for calculating Equalized Valuation, but they look at the previous year's real estate sales and then compare the sale values to the official, appraisals. If houses on average sell for 3x their assessed values then a town's Equalized Valuation would be 3x its official assessment. This is called the "assessment-sales ratio program."

JCGuys wrote:With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

The majority of the kids in public school in Hoboken fit that criteria. A high percentage of public school students in that city are from the Projects, section 8 buildings and rent control buildings. The new residents to Hoboken for the most part send their kids to private school and very few have kids to begin with.

I always assumed that is one of the reasons why Hoboken never knocked down their Projects because it would hurt the school system. I believe HP is the largest in NJ and the only large cluster of high rises that hasn't been demolished or scheduled to. They have four 10 story, eight 7 story and about thirty 3 story buildings in one site, plus two more 7 story building at a separate Project blocks away. Applied housing also owns many section 8 buildings scattered through out the city as well. So while the average adult resident isn't poor the average school aged child is.

The numbers you have on Hoboken are out of date. In 2013-2014, the most recent year for which I have data, the Hoboken schools are only 49% FRL-eligible. This is only the 96th highest in New Jersey. FRL-eligibility is not the same thing as being in poverty either - you can be at 185% of the poverty line to qualify for reduced lunch and 130% of the poverty line for free lunch.

Less than 1% of Hoboken students are ELLs, an extremely low figure. The state average is 5%.

One other thing. Some private schools run or have run district contracted pre-K for pre-K 3. St. Brigit's did this before it closed and I believe Primary Prep is doing it. The idea is to get the families into the free program and hope they like it enough to continue paying tuition.

JPhurst wrote:Pre-K needs to be available for all. If you create means tested pre-K you will create poor quality day care. One of the main attributes of public education is to have students of all economic backgrounds learning together. Although we provide supplemental assistance such as free lunches and subsidized after-school based on means that is a far cry from making the entire pre-K program means tested.

For decades Jersey City families who could get their children out of the schools would. Whether it was through Catholic schools or a charter. We now have strong demand for pre-K from families of all backgrounds, and that is filtering up to the higher grades.

After the school district has worked for years to create programs that appeal to everyone, the last thing you want to do would be to turn it once again into a program only for families who can't afford anything else.

I thought the majority of pre-K schools were already privately run. If that's the case - give low-income families vouchers to attend any pre-K they like.

JCGuys wrote:With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

The majority of the kids in public school in Hoboken fit that criteria. A high percentage of public school students in that city are from the Projects, section 8 buildings and rent control buildings. The new residents to Hoboken for the most part send their kids to private school and very few have kids to begin with.

I always assumed that is one of the reasons why Hoboken never knocked down their Projects because it would hurt the school system. I believe HP is the largest in NJ and the only large cluster of high rises that hasn't been demolished or scheduled to. They have four 10 story, eight 7 story and about thirty 3 story buildings in one site, plus two more 7 story building at a separate Project blocks away. Applied housing also owns many section 8 buildings scattered through out the city as well. So while the average adult resident isn't poor the average school aged child is.

JPhurst wrote:Pre-K needs to be available for all. If you create means tested pre-K you will create poor quality day care. One of the main attributes of public education is to have students of all economic backgrounds learning together. Although we provide supplemental assistance such as free lunches and subsidized after-school based on means that is a far cry from making the entire pre-K program means tested.

For decades Jersey City families who could get their children out of the schools would. Whether it was through Catholic schools or a charter. We now have strong demand for pre-K from families of all backgrounds, and that is filtering up to the higher grades.

After the school district has worked for years to create programs that appeal to everyone, the last thing you want to do would be to turn it once again into a program only for families who can't afford anything else.

Is this only true for schools in downtown and LCCC? I've only heard of high demand for preschool at Cornelia Bradford school and at Concordia. From speaking to my coworkers, they would all rather pay 20-30K private school tuition for pre-k or continue daycare than any of the other public preschools in Jersey City.

It costs about $13,000/year per child for 'free' public PreK. I don't have a problem means testing some guy living in a $2 million dollar brownstone in Hoboken, or asking him to pay his fair share (rather than ME paying his fair share).

Pre-K needs to be available for all. If you create means tested pre-K you will create poor quality day care. One of the main attributes of public education is to have students of all economic backgrounds learning together. Although we provide supplemental assistance such as free lunches and subsidized after-school based on means that is a far cry from making the entire pre-K program means tested.

For decades Jersey City families who could get their children out of the schools would. Whether it was through Catholic schools or a charter. We now have strong demand for pre-K from families of all backgrounds, and that is filtering up to the higher grades.

After the school district has worked for years to create programs that appeal to everyone, the last thing you want to do would be to turn it once again into a program only for families who can't afford anything else.

...Equalized Valuation is calculated annually by the county tax assessor and is supposed to be the market valuation of all the taxable real estate in a city. Equalized Valuation is used to apportion county taxes and school taxes in regional school districts.

JSleeze wrote:I reposted so it links to the absolute numbers - white kids raised by single parents are about 50% more than black. Percentages have nothing to do with it - if single parent households are the problem, as you seem to be suggesting - tough to really tell whether that is what you are saying or "I'm an ignorant racist" is what you really want to say - there is a much larger cohort of white kids in that circumstance and studying them would be informative. Other than saying "because I said so", you offer nothing to support your view that percentages matter.

The percentages you posted demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of black kids are raised by single parents, while the overwhelming minority of white kids are raised by single parents.

Sure, since there are tens or hundreds of millions more white people than black people, you will have more white people in any category, positive or negative. But that's meaningless without the context provided by statistics. A fifth grader knows this.

I reposted so it links to the absolute numbers - white kids raised by single parents are about 50% more than black. Percentages have nothing to do with it - if single parent households are the problem, as you seem to be suggesting - tough to really tell whether that is what you are saying or "I'm an ignorant racist" is what you really want to say - there is a much larger cohort of white kids in that circumstance and studying them would be informative. Other than saying "because I said so", you offer nothing to support your view that percentages matter.

What I said has nothing to do with where I work or live, and I don't know where you got that from anyway. What I said is the truth, and it won't change no matter what you think of me.

Yeah, some other posters are right that "school is sometimes the only constant in a child's life." That's because when you are born to a single mother, as 80% of black children born out of wedlock, it is too difficult for one person to properly provide for and be there for her child. Everything stems from the home life. And a black baby born to a mother AND father that is there for him or her, has a much better chance of succeeding than one born to a single parent. The obvious conclusion is children born to two parents that stay together = better for all involved.

Too bad people still refuse to recognize the problem, and a ridiculous comment like yours is one response.

What do black kids have to do with it? You do realize that there are millions more white kids who are raised by single parents than black? Single parent data

Considering the link you just posted shows that black kids are by far the most commonly raised by single parent households, approximately triple whites, being black has a lot to do with it.

Yeah, in an absolute number sense there may be more white families raised in single parent households than black, but that's only because there are tens of millions (or over a hundred million) more white people than black people. So it's silly and misleading to point to absolute numbers. You look at percentages.

And when, as you have shown, the statistics show that the overwhelming majority of black kids are raised by single parents, that disadvantage means everything.

What I said has nothing to do with where I work or live, and I don't know where you got that from anyway. What I said is the truth, and it won't change no matter what you think of me.

Yeah, some other posters are right that "school is sometimes the only constant in a child's life." That's because when you are born to a single mother, as 80% of black children born out of wedlock, it is too difficult for one person to properly provide for and be there for her child. Everything stems from the home life. And a black baby born to a mother AND father that is there for him or her, has a much better chance of succeeding than one born to a single parent. The obvious conclusion is children born to two parents that stay together = better for all involved.

Too bad people still refuse to recognize the problem, and a ridiculous comment like yours is one response.

What do black kids have to do with it? You do realize that there are millions more white kids who are raised by single parents than black? Single parent data

Jersey City, objectively and relatively speaking, does not have excessive taxes in terms of taxes per equalized valuation or taxes per dollar of income. Jersey City's all-in, effective tax rate (county, schools, municipality, other entities) is 2.291, is just average for New Jersey. Jersey City's all-in taxes are low compared to most of the other Abbotts though.

That's one objective measure. Another would be to compare Jersey City (and other NJ districts) to those in other states. Shouldn't we also consider what we get for our tax dollars? The return in NJ is so low and burdened so heavily by excess layers that anyone who thinks a tax bill in NJ is not excessive is either in government or has not idea how the rest of the world operates.

I agree with you on JC needing a reval, but the Equalized Valuation and the assessed valuation are separate figures.

Equalized Valuation is calculated annually by the county tax assessor and is supposed to be the market valuation of all the taxable real estate in a city. Equalized Valuation is used to apportion county taxes and school taxes in regional school districts.

A town in NJ is suppose to do a reval whenever its general assessment drops below 85% of Equalized Valuation, but there are places where this doesn't happen, like Jersey City.

Jersey City's assessed valuation is 27.6% of its Equalized Valuation, one of the ten biggest gaps in NJ.

Equalized Valuation is supposed to be used to calculate state aid in NJ for underaided districts, but this legal requirement is ignored. (overaided districts are supposed to automatically get 102% of what they got before SFRA through "Adjustment Aid" but many districts have not recovered from the 2009-2011 cuts.)

Very thought-provoking articles. Abbott is clearly not an equitable system. Putting aside the fact I think education should be funded at the state or federal level - tinkering with Abbott isn't the way to go. Number of FRL-eligible students is a better metric than the Abbott districts created decades ago. Free pre-K should be available only to FRL-eligible students. State funding should be tied to FRL numbers.

JC's contribution may increase and as a homeowner I'd be ok with that. The reval needs to happen first - it's tough to tell if JC's equalized value has any basis in reality given the last reval was in 1988.

Thank you to anyone who read my blog about NJ Education Aid, especially the posts about Jersey City.

Regarding whether or not Jersey City has an "excessive tax burden," EVERYONE in New Jersey thinks that they pay excessive taxes and many people actually do pay excessive taxes.

Jersey City, objectively and relatively speaking, does not have excessive taxes in terms of taxes per equalized valuation or taxes per dollar of income. Jersey City's all-in, effective tax rate (county, schools, municipality, other entities) is 2.291, is just average for New Jersey. Jersey City's all-in taxes are low compared to most of the other Abbotts though.

Jersey City's school taxes, however, are very low. The state average school tax rate is about 1.0, but JC's is 0.58.

More importantly, Jersey City pays less than one third of its its Local Fair Share.

Jersey City's Local Fair Share is $336 million, but its Local Tax Levy for 15-16 is only $114 million.

Even though JC has, by far, the highest equalized valuation in NJ (over $20 billion for FY 2016), it only has the 17th highest school taxes. Much smaller districts like Cherry Hill, East Brunswick, West Orange, Clifton, South Orange-Maplewood, and Wayne have higher local tax levies even though their Equalized Valuations and Total Incomes are much lower.

Demographically Jersey City is still an Abbott, although its FRL-eligible percentage is only the 41st highest in NJ and there are quite a few non-Abbotts with higher FRL-eligible rates.

HOWEVER, it's important to note that Jersey City has a proportionally smaller student population than most other districts, so the fact that 71% of its student population is FRL-eligible doesn't automatically mean it should still be an Abbott and Jersey City has had substantial ratable group.

Jersey City is an average resource district in terms of taxing ability but it has a student population that is still poor. I don't want to see Jersey City lose all or most of its aid, but, for the sake of NJ's many poorer districts, SOME REDISTRIBUTION HAS TO HAPPEN, some means-testing has to be applied for Pre-K, and JC has to begin to pay for a proportion of its capital projects.

Hoboken is a different story from Jersey City, although I often group them together along with Asbury Park as the three worst examples of aid hoarding.

Hoboken is NJ's wealthiest district in per pupil terms. Hoboken, a city of 52,000, only has 2,600 kids. Hoboken's Equalized Valuation is$ $13.3 billion, tied with Newark for NJ's 4th highest.

Hoboken's Local Fair Share per student is $187 million, which is more than half of Jersey City's. In per pupil terms, Hoboken has DOUBLE what Millburn and Princeton have.

Hoboken should lose all of its aid. It wouldn't matter if 100% of Hoboken's kids were in abject poverty since Hoboken has immense local resources.

It is disgusting that Hoboken gets $20 million a year for Pre-K and K-12. Most kids in poverty in non-Abbotts get nothing for Pre-K so how can the Education Law Center, Hoboken BOE, and NJ Supreme Court insist that the kids of lawyers and i-bankers in Hoboken get Pre-K for "free" because Hoboken was poor back in 1986?